fontane.200

From March 30 to December 30, 2019

2019 marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Theodore Fontane. Under the motto »fontane.200«, the State of Brandenburg will honor the great author, Theodor Fontane, within and beyond Brandenburg’s borders.

Like no other author, he shaped and continues to shape the identity of Brandenburg both within and beyond its borders. He has also made his mark on literary history as the most prominent German realist author. In addition to his popular novels and the »Wanderings through the March of Brandenburg«, Fontane wrote travel and war reports, reportage, and literary, art, and theater reviews.

The Fontane Year sheds a new light on Fontane, whom we presume to know so well, by looking beyond the established, accepted image of him. The Fontane Year invites us to discover anew the author in his entirety. It focuses on looking behind the scenes of his methods and his body of work by asking: How has the picture that we have of Fontane and his work emerged? Which common threads run through his work? How exactly did Fontane work on his texts? Which media did he use? And finally: what is it about Fontane’s work that still makes it a rewarding read time and again?

With a wide range of events, a diverse group of partners from the fields of culture, education, and science sheds light on the »making of« Fontane’s texts and offers an innovative examination of Fontane’s life and works.